


trying to find a heart (that's not walking away)

by DoctorFitzy (KittooningMalijah)



Series: life gives you lemons [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fights, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, kind of an open ended happy ending, lemons but like the actual fruit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:41:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26096524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KittooningMalijah/pseuds/DoctorFitzy
Summary: Deke knew that communication would be difficult after their trip to the carnival, but at least things were starting to look better. Until they weren't.
Relationships: Trevor Khan/Deke Shaw
Series: life gives you lemons [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1894300
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	trying to find a heart (that's not walking away)

**Author's Note:**

> picks up, technically, the same night the first fic leaves off. yes, there will be a part three.
> 
> title is from Ships In The Night by Mat Kearney

After the horrendous attempt at communication that was their rotation around the ferris wheel, Deke hadn't been able to find the person who had gotten him to the carnival in the first place. He'd gotten back to his apartment in a Lyft and hated every single second of it. Because it was all _wrong_. It was supposed to be their day, their trip, and he'd ruined it by overthinking everything, like usual.

The second half of his weekend was entirely miserable, and the only reason he made it through was because of the small glimmer of hope in his chest. If he had a few minutes to sit down and talk to Trevor between meetings and testing, they could get things sorted out and things could go back to normal, or something like it.

Only, when he got to work on Monday morning, his office was empty and the lights were still off. With a frown, Deke flipped the switch to turn on the bank of lights overhead before turning back into the hallway to look for someone who might have some answers. "Hey, Lindsay? Is Trevor running late? He's normally here like an hour before the rest of us." He had to be, to secure the building himself and check in with security. After Sarge and his crew had attacked, their security measures had to be upgraded, and that meant letting the trained SHIELD agent run some of it - at least, when he was _there_.

"Sorry, Mr. Shaw, no one in development has heard from him today. Maybe check with security? He might have gotten caught up with something, there."

Deke sighed and nodded his head, offering her a weak smile. "Thanks. Hey, uh... do we have any frozen lemonade in the cafeteria? You know, like... those things you'd get at the carnival?"

"I can check for you. If not, we can send an intern on a supply run?"

"No, no, that's okay." He let himself frown while he shook his head, leaning some of his weight against the doorframe. "Just a charcoal water is fine. Leave it on my desk? Swinging by the security office shouldn't take too long."

"Yes, Mr. Shaw."

-

Trevor wasn't in the security office, or at the cafeteria, or in the Framework room. He wasn't anywhere in the building. Of course, no one _told him that_ until human resources sent him a memo just after lunch that said his bodyguard had called out for the day due to _a SHIELD thing_. Which didn't worry him at all - or, at least, that's what he told people when they found out their resident secret agent wasn't going to be around for a day or two. It wouldn't do anyone any good if their CEO was worrying, so he put on a brave face.

He also spent a lot of time alone in his office for three days, but those facts weren't entirely related.

When Thursday rolled around and he still hadn't received so much as a text, Deke expected his new routine to go smoothly. He'd turn on the lights on in his office himself and read the morning report from security before making his usual rounds through the office. Only, this time, the lights were already turned on, and his office _wasn't_ empty. Trevor was sitting on one of the bright yellow bean bags, and he was _there_ , physically, but something was... _off_.

While everyone in the building _knew_ , after the attack, that Trevor worked for SHIELD, his main job within the company itself was still to be Deke's personal assistant, and that was the role he dressed for every morning. Except, on this particular morning, he looked out of place. With a SHIELD jacket and boots, he looked... well, like the babysitter he'd been assigned to be when they first met.

"Good morning, Mr. Shaw. Your breakfast is in the fridge." He didn't even look up from the folder in his hands while he spoke, the logo on the cover making it obvious that it _wasn't_ anything for the company. 

And the formality in his words was almost worse than the reminder of the organization that he was loyal to. Since they'd gotten back, things hadn't been quite so formal. It had been three months of _Deke_ , or the occasional teasing nickname, but it had been a _long time_ since he'd heard the man in front of him refer to him with his last name. And he hadn't missed it.

Slowly, Deke moved over to the mini fridge that was tucked away under his desk, opening it to peer inside at the brown bag that he presumed contained the aforementioned breakfast. It wasn't entirely abnormal to have food waiting for him when he got to work, but with the oddness of the rest of the week, he was hesitant to let that one piece of normalcy do anything to soothe his nerves. Instead, he closed the door and sat down to boot up his computer, trying to keep his own voice casual. "So, what crazy SHIELD thing took three days? Anything I should be worried about?"

"That's classified."

Of course it was.

With a sigh, Deke frowned and focused on his computer for a few minutes so that he could see what was on his plate. Halfway through his quiet reading, he took out the bag from the fridge by his knee to start nibbling at the muffin within, but it wasn't until later, when he was talking to some of his programmers and his SHIELD agent had gone off to who knows where that he realized that the fresh, balancing flavor under the more dominant blueberries in his gifted breakfast was _lemon_.

-

Getting up early on the _off chance_ that the person he wanted to see would be in the office was really pushing the boundaries of what Deke was willing to do to fix things. But he forced himself out of bed and into clean clothes so that he could swing by the bakery next to the main office and get coffee and breakfast. He got a cookie for himself and made sure the other treat was safely boxed up before actually heading into his own building.

He'd accomplished his goal, and the lights were still off when he got to his office, so the little brown box went into the fridge next to him. It only took a few minutes for footsteps to sound in the hallway, and when the door opened and a gun was raised to be pointed in his direction, he didn't even flinch.

"Good morning, Agent Kahn. I grabbed you a coffee, and your breakfast is in the fridge."

The words were meant to mirror the ones said to him the day before, so he didn't look away from the computer screen in front of him, and the quiet sigh that reached his ears a moment later told him they served their purpose. If Trevor wanted things to be more formal between them again, he could make that happen, even if he didn't necessarily like it, himself.

Of the two cups of coffee in front of him, the one that was snatched up was the one that wasn't over ice and topped with cream, and he could see the SHIELD logo on the jacket out of the corner of his eye when the chair across from him was occupied. "You know, I still have to check the rest of the building and talk to security."

Deke was already moving to take the box from the fridge, setting it and a plastic fork down on the desk between them with a shake of his head. "Then you can at least do it after caffeine and some food." He made himself look over at his government appointed babysitter with a tense smile before sipping from his own cup of coffee and watching while hands that he knew all too well opened the box and started to pick at the lemon bar contained within.

-

For the next week and a half, things between them were tense but improving. Every morning or afternoon, at least one of them would have a treat for the other - a lemon bar, a muffin, a flavored lemonade, a cupcake... Over the weekend, Deke had tried to actually bake something himself, but that had just resulted in his fire alarm going off and a hasty apology to his landlord, so he didn't try again.

Thursday, two weeks to the day after Trevor had returned from his mysterious _SHIELD thing_ , Deke was in the office early again, as had become his new routine. He was perfectly content to drink his sugary iced coffee and scroll through emails for a little while until his gaze rested on an automated message from HR's systems that had only been in his inbox for a little over an hour:

_Trevor Kahn - FINAL SHIFT_

Logically, he knew what those words meant, but even opening the email didn't make it all _make sense_ . Any member of his team could quit their job if they wanted or needed to, he knew that, but after things settled again after the attack, there were a handful of people he thought he knew _wouldn't_ . Kaya and Lindsay had stuck around, and the main programmers for Remorath Rumble, and _Trevor_ , even if he was only there because of SHIELD, but he was still a _constant_.

Until he wasn't. Until he quit. Until things were so bad that he quit and didn't even _tell_ him.

Deke frowned at the screen while he deleted the email and made himself focus on things he could actually _do_. If it really was Trevor's last day, then that meant he still had about ten hours to change his mind, and he would do exactly that.

When he heard footsteps, almost half an hour later, he was still frowning, but instead of his emails on his screen, it was a piece of code that needed to be fixed up. His coffee was empty, and he didn't look over when he heard the crinkly paper of the usual bag against the desk. Even the email that had originally soured his mood was out of his mind while he focused, wanting to get everything back in order before he had to go downstairs.

"Sorry, the line next door was crazy long by the time I got there. I grabbed you a donut. I just have to run down to security to go over a few things and then I'll be back."

Deke grunted and glanced up just in time to see a blue cardigan disappear into the hall, with no SHIELD logos in sight. Reaching over to take the powdered donut out of the bag, he bit down, the warm lemon cream inside tasting like _home_.

-

At lunch, he had his own food spread out on his desk, occasionally taking small bites of the less frozen and more slushy lemonade that Lindsay had stocked his fridge with despite his insistence that he didn't need it. The code had been fixed early in the morning, before most of the team had gotten in and started their own work, but there were a few things he wanted to look over before he tested the game, which only left him about an hour to get caught up on everything else.

The chair on the other side of the desk scraped the floor just enough for Deke to hear that he wasn't alone, and he pulled his attention away from the computer so he could dig into the fridge. Another slushy lemonade, a spoon, and a straw were produced in seconds from his various hiding spots, and he set it in the middle of the desk, right next to his own.

"It doesn't really get cold enough to keep them frozen, in there. It's easier just to drink it, at this point."

"Thank you, for the thought, but, uh... I actually don't like lemonade."

Trevor's words made him look across the desk properly, a confused frown pulling at his lips. "Wait a minute, then why do you keep getting them? Because you've brought me like two this week, and you always have another cup in your hand."

"Uh, yeah, sweet tea. _With lemon_ , but still sweet tea, not lemonade." Shrugging, Trevor relaxed further in his chair and arched a brow. "I like lemon _things_. I ate that entire muffin yesterday and it was huge. You did not have to get me the jumbo muffin."

Deke let out a laugh, the sound happier and more _normal_ than anything else since their trip to the carnival almost three weeks prior. "Yeah, I did. I had to watch you complain about how full you were for two hours because you took it as a challenge."

"Because you set it in front of me and said, and I quote, _I bet you can't eat the whole thing_. So I had to, to win the bet."

"We didn't even _bet_ anything; you just started eating!" With a shake of his head, Deke let himself grin while he took another spoonful of lemon slush and shifted in his seat to turn his gaze back to his screen. He didn't really want to face the man he almost started to consider a friend again while having the next piece of necessary conversation. "Speaking of jumbo things, you still have my bear held hostage. Are you going to give him back before you ditch out on us?"

The silence that settled into the air between them was heavy, and every sense of ease they'd found with each other evaporated. Trevor shifted in his seat to sit up straighter and took a deep breath but said nothing, staring at the not-quite-frozen lemonades set side by side on the desk between them. The only other noise in the quiet was Deke occasionally hitting a few keys on his computer, still trying to focus on the things that needed to get done. Whatever argument was about to ensue, he couldn't let it disrupt the rest of the company - they did have launch day coming up at the end of the month, and it would be irresponsible of him to let the ball drop because he was hurting.

"Look, Deke..."

A few more keystrokes, a click, the swivel of the chair, and he was facing the SHIELD agent across from him again, the emotion clear in his eyes while he slouched. "What, were you just not going to tell me? Were you just going to let me get the email from HR and hope I didn't say anything to you about it? Or were you hoping they wouldn't even email me because you only work for the company on a technicality? If SHIELD is pulling you away for something more important, I get it-"

"SHIELD is not _pulling me away_ -"

"-because I know there are more important things to do than babysit me, but to not even _say_ anything to me-"

"-it's a complicated situation-

"-I thought we were _best friends_!"

"-I _asked_ to be _reassigned_!"

Silence fell again, for just a moment, and Deke was too stunned by the statement to interrupt when it was distrubed.

"I _asked_ to leave. That's what the classified SHIELD thing was, a couple weeks ago. I had to meet with the Director to put in the request, and then I put in my notice with your human resources department as soon as it got approved." Trevor looked away from him, then, taking a deep breath before he spoke again. "You disappeared, at the carnival, after I explained the lemonade. And you already hated me for being with SHIELD in the first place, so I figured they could assign someone else to keep an eye on you and I'd be out of your way. And then you brought in the lemon bar, and the muffins, and the cupcake, and... I don't _want_ to leave now, but Mack already gave me a hard time about this transfer because I _begged_ to keep this assignment when you were setting up again..."

Deke let his shoulders sag while he shook his head, his gaze landing on the lemonades between them with a weak frown. "Don't do that... don't act like it's so _hard_ for you to leave and go back to SHIELD again. _You_ were the one who abandoned _me_ at the carnival, not the other way around. I looked for you for an _hour_ after you left me at the wheel, and you weren't anywhere to be found, so I called a car and went home. And then you didn't come into work for three days, because of some _classified_ SHIELD thing. What kind of conclusions am I _supposed_ to come to?"

"Maybe a _logical_ one? You'd just been telling me that you thought I put all of your deep, dark secrets into daily packets for everyone to read, and then I all but blurted out that I'm in love with you, so I kind of assumed that wouldn't be welcome."

Silence. A beat. And then, quietly:

"I didn't _think_ you shared all of it, I just wanted to double check that it was _only_ stuff related to SHIELD. Because... because if you were just going to get to the ground and call Mack and tell him that I kissed you, then I wasn't going to do it." Dropping his gaze, to the edge of the desk, where there was no risk of accidental eye contact, and cleared his throat awkwardly while his fingers drifted over to the wrist where he had long since cut the carnival bracelet from. "But, I, uh... I was going to, before you mentioned being subtle about something, and then I was just too confused, and-"

With his eyes down, he didn't even notice the movement around him or register the footsteps moving from the other side of the desk closer to him until his own chair was being pulled back to put space between the two pieces of furniture. As soon as gentle fingers were lifting his chin to _make_ him look up, he let his gaze lift to see just how close his friend had actually gotten only for his thoughts to be halted and derailed as soon as soft lips met his own.

And he tasted like cinnamon and cream cheese from his breakfast, and the lingering bitterness of coffee, and something that was so wonderfully and distinctly _Trevor_ that he was sure no amount of science could ever recreate. And he didn't want it to stop, not from the moment it started, but it _had_ to end. He wasn't so stupid that he didn't know _that_ . They were temporarily alone, but his office was rarely locked if he was in and working, and someone could walk in at any moment. Not that it really mattered if they got caught on his _last day_.

"Just for the record... I haven't had to report _anything_ to SHIELD, since I got back... I got taken off of babysitting duty, remember? Deke... you haven't even been my mission on a technicality in two weeks..."

Deke shook his head, bringing a hand up to reluctantly stop another kiss from happening. As much as he _did_ want more, there were still a few things they needed to discuss. "Wait, wait, wait... are you saying we could have been doing this for _two weeks_ with no consequences? And we _haven't_ been doing it?" With a small frown, he kept the palm of his hand pressed to Trevor's chest to keep the space between them for a few more moments. "If... if today is your last day... when do you have to go off to wherever SHIELD reassigned you? How long do we have to actually like... _do this_?"

The sigh he got in response made what little hope he'd let build in his chest completely disappear. "They're sending a quinjet to pick me up first thing Saturday morning... as soon as I'm done for the day, here, I have to go get some rest so I can finish packing tomorrow. And no, I can't make going away plans with you tomorrow night because I'll have to be briefed for my next assignment in the air."

"No." With a more pointed frown, Deke got to his feet and pressed a kiss to the lips still within reach - it was even more short lived than the first one had been, but he had a plan to put into action. Letting himself get distracted would jeopardize that. "I'm taking the rest of the day off, and so are you. And then I'm taking tomorrow off. They can survive without me for a day and a half, I'm sure."

"Deke, I still-"

"You still have to pack, yeah, I know." With a shake of his head, he started clearing their lunch from the desk and into the trash can, even the things that had been mostly untouched. It wasn't like they couldn't get _better_ food as soon as they were en route to wherever they were going to spend their afternoon. "In the morning, I'll help you pack, and then we _can_ make plans for a little going away party. We'll have plenty of time, right?"

Trevor's smile and the faint red tint to his cheeks was all the answer he needed.

-

They never actually grabbed lunch. They never even _discussed_ it on their way to Deke's apartment, and they got all the way to the bed before even one stomach started to grumble with displeasure.

" _Deke_..."

"No, I have to get up, or it will eat itself."

Except it hadn't actually _interrupted_ anything. They hadn't kissed since the two they'd shared in his office, and they weren't even _touching_ where they'd been laying on top of the soft blankets. Their fingers had been close to touching, inches away, but it was like waiting in line for the ferris wheel - neither of them actually made a move, no matter how much they both wanted to.

Even once he was on his feet, he was hesitant to move, biting his lip and gazing down at the man still entirely comfortable in his bed. Their time together was severely limited, and leaving even long enough to get a snack felt like he was sacrificing too much of that precious, dwindling time, but it couldn't be helped. So, he tried to be quick, only leaving long enough to grab a string cheese from his fridge. It would be enough to hold him over until they could muster up the energy to get a real meal.

"Very nutritious."

"Shut up."

When he settled in again, Deke felt his arm brush against the one next to him, and he looked over at his SHIELD agent with a small smile. Though, could he really even say that anymore? If _Agent Kahn_ wasn't going to be his babysitter anymore, then he wasn't really _his_ agent. He would be going off to some other mission, some other assignment, some other annoyance - if it was even a babysitting job. It could be something more dangerous than that, and he wouldn't even _know_.

"Do you know where they're sending you? Will it be close? Or do I have to close up and rebuild again?"

This time, Trevor didn't hesitate before reaching for his hand and entwining their fingers - _just like the ferris wheel_. "For right now, I'm just going back to the Lighthouse. I don't even know if they'll have me doing anything in particular, there. I might just be helping out in command for a while. Even if I knew, I couldn't tell you where. It's-"

"Classified, yeah. Got it." With a sigh, he squeezed the hand in his and took a bite off the end of his cheese before directing his gaze toward the ceiling. "Will you at least visit, if you can? It feels so _unfair_ , that you're leaving as soon as we fix things..."

"Of course I'll visit. And, if they send me anywhere cool, I'll see if I can get you any foreign lemon treats."

Deke was able to laugh, then, shaking his head while he relaxed into the nest of pillows and blankets under them. The warmth that filled his chest was familiar enough that he had a name for it. It was like tasting coffee on his best friend's lips, or custard and powdered sugar when it was too early to be awake, or a frozen lemonade under the hot sun - _home_.

 **(** _"And you'll give me my bear back? Because I won that thing fair and square."_

_"Oh, please, I won that bear. Your form was sloppy at best. No, I'm definitely keeping him. He's mine now."_

_"Now, hold on. You wanted to just buy one off the internet."_

_"And then we won one, together. I'm keeping him for the sentimental value."_

_"Can we have joint custody, at least? We'll trade off whenever you have the chance to visit."_

_"Yeah, alright, fine."_

_"Hey, Trevor?"_

_"Yeah?"_

_"I'm a little in love with you, too."_ **)**


End file.
